


Dull Roots, Spring Rain

by FeuillesMortes



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Henry VI Part 3 - Shakespeare, The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But also, Cute Kids, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Pining, Possibly Unrequited Love, The Wars of the Roses, exist in this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 09:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24348637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeuillesMortes/pseuds/FeuillesMortes
Summary: AU: Weeks after an unexpected Lancastrian victory at the Battle of Towton, Jasper Tudor takes his young nephew to meet his brother, King Henry VI.
Relationships: Henry VII of England & Jasper Tudor, Jasper Tudor/Margaret of Anjou
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	Dull Roots, Spring Rain

**Author's Note:**

> (*) Some lines of dialogue are written in French. You can find the translation at the end notes section.

WINDSOR CASTLE  
May, 1461

The grass felt slippery under the heel of his boot, the green lank and drenched following the morning’s meagre rain. A miscalculated move, the sliding of a foot too far, too wide, and he could fall face-first against the earth. Mud-soaked, like some battleground he had been before: a sea of unfamiliar faces all around him and a single fear to unite them all.

“Harry, where are you going?”

Jasper took four long strides towards the rose bushes, hand darting forward to find his four-year-old nephew’s small back. His conversation with his brother the king just a moment before had distracted him long enough to lose sight of Harry. He turned the child around, the boy opening his little fist to let out a shower of light pink petals, a stream of blush leaking from between his fingers, thin rivulets of roses. He saw the abrupt urgency of his voice reflected on the boy’s rounded eyes — eyes blue like Edmund’s, or his own.

“I’m sorry, uncle.”

His nephew held his breath, drew it all in one ball of tension gathered inside his chest, lip pouting, before he let it out noisily through his nose. Jasper knew that look all too well: fear of disappointment with a little shiver inside. He sighed and crouched down in front of the boy.  
  
“There was no harm done, Harry.” He took some of the fallen petals and pressed them back into his nephew’s hand. “But we can’t have you wandering around. Should you get lost in this garden we would take a long time to find you again. Do you understand?” 

Perhaps it had been a poor idea to leave the boy’s nurse behind, yet there was no way to leave his half-brother David alone in Pembroke with no one to care for him. It was not exactly proper to bring a bastard before the king, much less to present him to the queen. Jasper was not made for childrearing but that did not mean he would not try to do it right. 

He squeezed his nephew’s small shoulder, smiling at a level with him. “We are here to see your uncle the king, remember? Uncle Henry?”

Sometime before his departure for Mortimer’s Cross, Jasper had explained to Harry that the boy could, in fact, have more than just one uncle. The king was _also_ his uncle, he had tried to explain in simple words, and it was in his name that he and grandpapa would be going off to war. The boy had furrowed his brow in a puzzled expression. Growing in Pembroke’s far-away, enclosed solitude, his nephew had thought uncles were a type of relative one could only ever have as a single unit per life. _No_ , Jasper had almost said, a cool sadness pooling inside his chest, a single drop touching a still lake, rippling — _no, it is a father what you’re thinking of._

Harry gave him a grave nod. He had always been such a nice, well-behaved child; he never did anything to displease him. Yet just like that nod he gave him, his nephew was perhaps too serious a boy for his age. He had spent too time alone with his nurse, Jasper reckoned, too much time with no other child to make him company before David was brought to Pembroke Castle. Jasper’s unexpected natural brother was scarcely more than a baby, though, and perhaps no prestigious company for the young Earl of Richmond. Regardless of his own doubts, Jasper had taken David in all the same, apprehensive for the boy’s future as he and his father gathered troops for the coming battle. In that one hurried, grey-tinted afternoon, Jasper had been right to worry.

Presently, being in Windsor Castle for the renewal of fealty weeks after the Lancastrian victory at Towton did not make much difference in terms of weather. Spring mornings were always washed with light — pure-white, clear rising glow — but the chill still lingered on, ice and dew mingled with the scent of the flowers in bloom. The sun kissed his nephew’s hair with a cold, detached touch as it soared high above the still naked trees. Under that light, the boy’s hair was the colour of wheat, the same colour Edmund’s had been at his age — the same colour, or at least how Jasper remembered it to be. There were times Harry made such a peculiar face, nose wrinkling, it would remind him painfully of his brother. Yet Edmund had never looked so sad as a child. Jasper had spent too much time away thanks to York and his supporters’ treasonous acts against the king. He had promised himself he would remedy his absence in time.

“Aren’t you excited to talk to the king, Harry?” Jasper smoothed the hair strands on the crown of the boy’s head. “I promised your mother would be the next one we visit, didn’t I?” Mentioning his mother never failed to make the boy smile — sometimes even squee with glee — and it was with a smile of his own that Jasper went back to his feet. “Cheer up, little lad!” He laughed, and with a sweep of his hand, he messed the hair strands he had smoothed just a moment before.

Jasper shot a glance back at his brother sat on a carved wooden bench some feet away, the plies of his long but simple blue gown falling down to his ankles. The king looked incredibly still surrounded by his roses and peonies, a far-away expression that spoke of a dreamy state of mind whose calm softness contrasted markedly with his emaciated physique. He looked as thin as he had when under York’s protectorate, that troublesome time when they had struggled to feed him anything but broths and creams, long stretching days when his stillness was less like an illuminated picture and more like that of a tree: unthinking, unknowing, obtuse and dark. God only knew what he had endured under Warwick that last time. _He was found laughing and singing under a tree_ , some evil tongues had whispered at court. Jasper preferred not to heed ill words.

It was Queen Margaret the one who met Jasper’s searching gaze. If there were any inquiring pair of eyes who watched over his and his nephew’s brief chat, it could only be Margaret’s. She stood by the king’s side in her silks as if refusing to sit, refusing to tip down her chin, shoulders pushed against her spine like the work of a sentinel or a watchdog. Jasper had learnt to be grateful for that stiff-backed stance over the past few years. Margaret was no ordinary woman: if not for her courage and her raising of troops in Scotland, the war might have turned out quite differently for them.

King and queen smiled at his nephew as Jasper led him back by the hand. 

“I am glad you decided to come back, Harry.” His brother Henry said, gaze boring soulfully into the child’s bashful face.

Harry stood holding Jasper’s hand for a couple of seconds, blinking, before he bowed in front of the king. “Sire.” He half-mumbled, cheeks turning slightly pink.

Margaret pointed to his nephew’s clenched fist. “What is it that he's got in his hand?” 

Contrary to their expectations, Harry let go of Jasper’s hand and stepped forward, making his way towards the king. He opened his fist to let the petals Jasper had pressed into his palm fall on his uncle’s knees, light as kisses, before he half-ran back to his side again, hand reaching out for Jasper’s. 

“My lord Harry,” The king smiled, taking one of the crumpled petals to his nose. “I should thank you for such a beautiful present.”

His nephew’s face bloomed an even brighter shade of pink. He smiled back at the king, the timid curve of his lips pushing back against his still baby-fat cheeks. 

At that moment, there was something familiar about the way the king looked at little Harry, the shade of a scene Jasper had seen before like dust imprinted on old parchment. _Where had he seen it? Where?_ At Barking, at the abbey where he and Edmund had grown up? No, sometime before. The day they had come to take them away, perhaps. Henry had been fairly young then, but he had seemed enormously tall in Jasper’s eyes, the abstract concept of a king taking form in a young man’s face. _Maman has retired to a marvellous place where there is no pain nor sorrow_ — Jasper remembered his long, placid gaze hovering over them — _we shall not see her for a long time yet._ He had looked at that strange boy’s long curled lashes, at the golden threads woven in them. _Her heavenly home is finer than ours shall ever be, so fret not, little ones. We shall all be reunited again, at the end of times._

Jasper recognised that look with which he lavished little Harry now: it was pity — blind, unadulterated, naked pity. On the day of his mother's passing Jasper had been old enough to know that death was an insurmountable and definite event. Henry could have easily sent someone else to take them to their new home yet he had decided to meet his brothers all the same, his choice a sort of special kindness. In his brother’s brown eyes all that he saw now was the blind spot sucked out of light, the space left by Edmund’s ghostly absence. Jasper wrapped his arm across his nephew’s shoulders, pressed his head against the side of his leg. Margaret, as ever, shook him out of it, firm voice tethering him back to earth.

She sped her eyes around the garden. “Where is his nurse?”

“Back in my lodgings, with the rest of my servants.” 

Margaret pressed her lips together in a thin straight line. “That won’t do, we have many matters to discuss yet. We can’t have you following the boy around like some mother hen. I shall call for Ned.”

Jasper ground his molars together, letting the sting sink in. What other people might have taken for harshness, Jasper knew it was Margaret’s simple modus operandi, the house made of steel where all insults hurled at the queen were turned into a place to live — yet her words could still bite, they could still wound, unintentionally or not. His feelings hardly mattered now: Prince Edward of Westminster was four years older than his cousin; Jasper doubted very keenly that the prince would appreciate spending time with a child half his age, a boy still stuck in a dress. 

“Margaret, sister. Please, I say there is no need.”

Unheeding his words as if batting away a fly, the queen clapped her hands, causing one of her ladies to promptly mill her way to their position under the shade cast by the castle’s stone walls. 

“Send for the Prince of Wales.”

Harry craned his head around to shoot his uncle a look of transparent befuddlement. _Your cousin Ned_ , Jasper mouthed to him, but of course the name would ring hollow inside the boy’s head when the two cousins had never even met yet. It didn’t take long for Prince Edward to come walking noisily across the gravel path, his surefooted strides taking him with all the precocious confidence of a boy who had learnt the meaning of courage perhaps a tad too early.

“Ned, my prince,” The queen started, face softening into a picture of subtle tenderness. It was a small change, the way her eyebrows would go lax at the edges, but Jasper had always enjoyed watching them together for that reason alone. “Come and see who has just arrived now.”

The boy let out the widest grin when he laid his eyes on Jasper. “Uncle Pembroke!” He yelled in full strength, his steps acquiring speed before his eyes dropped to the boy at Jasper’s feet. He halted at once.

Margaret waved a hand towards the young child. “Yes, also meet Lord Richmond.” 

Prince Edward stood bewildered for a couple of seconds, hand scratching his dark head before his mother laid a hand on his shoulder and supplied him with some explanation. “I mean this child, your cousin Harry.”

“My cousin?” Ned glanced back at her. “Like my cousins of Somerset?”

Forgotten for a moment on his bench, his brother Henry erupted in a warm, low chuckle. The sound of a benevolent forest creature — an ancient woodland dweller, perhaps, like his antelope badge, green moss grown over the horns.

 _Well, yes and no_ , Jasper thought, a hint of amusement playing at the corners of his mouth and causing him to bite back a smile. The boy was, after all, Beaufort by blood. 

“Your cousin as in he’s the son of your uncle, the king’s brother.”

“ _Uncle Pembroke had a son?_ ” 

The Prince whipped his head back to Jasper, his expression half blur of perplexion and half accusation of betrayal. Jasper had to suppress the laugh rising in the back of his throat, careful not to offend his royal nephew’s sensibilities. He simply shook his head and closed his eyes for a second.

Margaret sighed, touched the daisies embroidered on the hems of her sleeves with a scratching fingertip. Patience was a costly thing to the queen but her son was the recipient blessed with the precious cargo most of the times. 

“No, dear.” She took a deep, long breath that made her chest heave, her gold chain set against her collarbones. “He’s the son of your _other_ uncle, the Earl of Richmond.” 

“Oh.” The prince blinked. “I see.”

Prince Edward shot a curious glance at Harry, the boy still holding Jasper’s hand, standing unmovable by his side. It was evident Ned didn’t remember his uncle Edmund. He had been younger than Harry when the fiasco at Carmarthen had taken place. _Fiasco_ , the bitter word echoed through Jasper’s mind, spreading with a soundless whisper. _Fiasco, fiasco, fiasco_. The word York had pointedly banded around to refer to his brother’s campaign against Gruffudd ap Nicholas’ riots in Wales. As if York had not sent his best butchers after his brother. Jasper’s jaw set tightly at the memory, rusted hinges working inside his face under skin and flesh. _May the rascal rot in hell, and all the other devils with him_. Like many others, Jasper had not felt a single twinge of sympathy after hearing the news of York’s demise at Wakefield. He had, in fact, rejoiced thoroughly, though perhaps no more than Somerset and the other orphans from St Albans must have done. In that spiralling war, blood washed blood clean.

Jasper pressed his hand flat against Harry’s back and pushed him forward. “Harry, greet your cousin the Prince of Wales.”

A number of important lords had gathered in York that past January to renew their allegiance to the queen, to the king and his son. Northumberland, Somerset, Exeter, Westmorland, Devon, the bishops of Carlisle and Coventry, among many others — as Jasper himself would have done, were he not in Wales at the time gathering troops for the upcoming battle against the Earl of March. After what could only be described as the Act of Accord disaster, it was the only right thing to do.

“Sire.” The boy blurted, rather ungainly, with a new bow of his blond head.

It made Prince Edward giggle. “I’m not your liege yet, Harry!” He stole a glance at his royal father before settling his eyes back on his cousin. “And I shan’t be for a long time. You may call me cousin.”

Harry was gaping at him. The boy had always been a curious child, not so much as _curious_ in action as _curious_ in mind. His eyes now were fixed on his cousin the prince with a singular unmovable attention. He neither stepped towards this new friend who offered a smile nor shied away behind his uncle’s legs. He simply… observed, patient and eager in equal measure. Jasper had been like that once; as if life was a feast too marvellous for one to be more than a simple silent spectator. Edmund had been different, ready to taste life to the fullest. _Don’t be afraid, Jasper,_ he had told him as soon as they arrived in the abbey, _I will take care of you now_. Christ, his brother had only been a child — a child with a dead mother and a father in prison!

Queen Margaret called one of her ladies. “Agnes, will you show the new rosebuds to the prince and his cousin? Lord Richmond seems quite fond of them.”

 _Right away, Your Grace_ , said the lady, promptly taking Prince Edward by the hand. Harry was still rooted in place when the prince turned back and called his name over his shoulder. _Aren’t you coming, cousin?_ Harry looked up at Jasper as if asking permission, and, after a single nod from his uncle, darted forward in full speed to catch up with the Prince of Wales. Ned in his turn sprinted away to play a game of chase. _Come on, Harry! Catch me if you can!_ The unexpected laughs of the two boys rang with delight inside that garden. Perhaps Harry had not been the only boy in need of a companion.

The game could be hardly fair on the four-year-old running in his skirts, but Ned would stop from time to time, looking back, waiting for his cousin to catch up before starting again. His brother Henry watched it all from his bench in that characteristic silence of his, the fond smile, his face unnervingly youthful for a man his age. It was evident his son meant a great deal to him, all of his hopes and dreams fused in the figure of a boy whose birth he had tragically not recognised. War might be over as far as they knew but there were still plenty of repairments each one owed to their own families.

“Jasper.”

He had not noticed Margaret staring at him. It had not been the usual way between the two of them. Some time ago, it sufficed the queen steered her searing dark eyes his way and Jasper would instantly turn to her side, unthinking sunflower following the light —daylight, yes, yet it would make for poor poetry to compare her to the sun if only for its scorching quality, the flammable, red-hot touch of its gaze. That change did nothing to stop Jasper from standing straighter now, did nothing to make that state of alertness go away from inside his skull. Steeling himself, he turned to meet her in full.

“It makes me glad that you are here today.”

Jasper shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking away towards the boys at play. “It is my duty as a peer to renew my allegiance to the king.” He started but bit his tongue, tried to soothe away that strange unfounded brittleness in his voice. “And nothing makes me gladder than seeing my brother at peace.”

At the mention of _his brother_ , a small line appeared between the queen’s eyebrows, somewhere on that pearly place above her nose. For a moment, it looked as though she was about to retort his statement, but she followed his gaze towards the children. By then the prince had found a stick and was pretending it to be a sword, showing off the moves he had already learnt during his sparring lessons. Harry followed them all with wide, marvelled eyes, all the swashes and flourishes that struck the air, the wasp-like arabesques. A memory flashed in the back of his eyelids: _Don't let anyone see this_ , the queen's hushed voice, a dagger sliding inside the prince's fur-line doublet. _Do you hear me, Ned? You can't let anyone see it_. _Promise me you won't let anyone see it._

“Ned is very fond of you." Her voice rose as if from the bottom of the ocean. "I hope you know that.”

Jasper let his eyes drift to the queen again, gaze touching the side of her face where her hair was bound in plaits around her ears and under the gauzy veil of her headdress. She raised a finely sculpted eyebrow at his _what-is-that-supposed-to-mean_ expression. 

“Now that the Yorkists are gone—” They paused, exchanged a swift, significant look. York’s two youngest sons were still held under house arrest. A trouble for another time. “—We were hoping to set the prince’s own household without delay. As his uncle, there is no other man we trust more than you to be given this task—there is no other man _I_ trust more.”

He did not know how to take the news. If the power and prestige of such position were undeniable, it also meant having to move away and choose one nephew over the other — or rather, one nephew over nephew and brother. Perhaps in a crueller world, Jasper would have been forced to do just that. He would do as they bid him, of course, as he had always done — he, faithful knight of the round table plucked out of his time. There was nothing Jasper would not do for his brother, and yet...

“I’m surprised you didn’t choose someone else.” Jasper's own bitterness caught him unaware, rose over him like a tide. “I reckon Somerset is more than eligible for the task.” 

Henry Beaufort was younger than Jasper by some five years, yet he had shown himself to be the ablest commander at the head of the Lancastrian army. His army had travelled some twenty miles each day since their departure from France, had bravely stood their ground at Towton to the Earl of March’s abysmal surprise. Hate and pursuit of revenge for his father had fuelled him well enough, Jasper supposed, a crave for revenge could stir the blood of anyone.

Margaret gritted her teeth. “Somerset is needed here, next to the king like his father once was.”

 _Does that mean I am not?_ Jasper blinked. “As am I, back in Wales.” 

After the Yorkist defeat at Towton — the deaths of the Earl of March and Norfolk, the execution of Warwick and his brother Lord Fauconberg — only a small Yorkist group had retreated back to Wales. Jasper had already seen to the castles of Denbigh and Carreg Cennen in the previous year, as well Harlech, so only Caernarfon now remained to be taken. Now the castle was held by William Herbert and Walter Devereaux, York’s special bloodhounds, the same ones who had seen to Edmund’s incarceration and death years before. 

“I am looking forward to writing an end to it.” His hand crept up to his belt, scooted closer to where his dagger sat in its leather sheath. His tone was final, hoping for the subject to be dropped. “As Her Grace is well aware.”

The use of her formal type of address was a lengthening line stringing them further apart. Margaret must have felt the bite of iciness in his words and pushed it no further. Jasper loathed himself for it. As if sensing something wrong, his brother Henry glanced quickly over them but finding only Jasper’s awkward nod, settled his eyes on the boys again. He watched them in their far-off, make-believe dreamland. 

_When I am king I shall make you a knight of the Garter! Would you like that, Harry? Do you wish to become a knight?_

A squeal-like sound. _Yes!_

_Then kneel before your king, Sir Harry. No, not like that, only one knee should touch the ground—yes, yes like that. Now keep still. I mean very still. I, King Edward, your lord sovereign, dub thee Sir Harry of—_

The prince turned back to them.

“Uncle, where is he from, again?”

Much despite himself, Jasper felt a chuckle growing on him. “He’s the lord of Richmond, my prince.” 

With a smile, Ned went back to his make-believe game, knighting his cousin by making him repeat vows after him; vows to protect the poor, the children and the widows, the sick, and above all else, stay true to his king’s cause. Should they grow close enough, perhaps in time Ned would give his cousin a dukedom. Only the children would live on unblemished, only the children would walk without carrying the scars all of them had collected for life. Jasper felt Queen Margaret stepping closer to him, her voice paused under the guise of casual conversation.

“I suppose now you are free to take a wife.”

He met her dark, dancing irises, the half-spoken sorrow mingled with indignation in them. _Lord above,_ they were not supposed to be doing this, they were supposed to be celebrating. That moment in Harlech before she fled to Scotlandhad spoilt everything, every carefully built wall, every brick kept in its place for so many years. Jasper glanced down and away.

“I suppose, yes.”

“You should follow your brother's example and do it without delay.” By then the wind had caught in her headdress so that from under her veil, Margaret regarded him through a type of sheer white gauze. “Find some young buxom girl to pop you an heir before the year runs out.”

Jasper clenched his teeth against the urge to sweep the gauze away from her face. The wind did it for him before he could follow any stupid, hot-blooded instinct. He knew the crudity of her words was a type of shield, the raised arm bearing the sword above her head and daring anyone to step closer. Only Margaret knew how to perfect her fears into weapons.

He looked at her squarely, eyes narrowing and shoulders rising. “Harry is my heir.”

A cluck of tongue. “He is not your son.”

“Why does that matter?”

“He is only one child.” Margaret held her ground against him, dark gaze shimmering. “He could get _sick_ , he could _die_ —”

“Assez, Margot.” He felt a surge of desperation and anger but it only made his voice drop, it only made him lower his head instead. “Assez, je vous en prie.”

Why had he spoken in her mother tongue? Why had he called her by that affectionate name? Why, if not because he recognised in her jagged words nothing but the reflection of her own fears, the reflection of her own guilt and failure? King Henry also had only one heir. Margaret’s pain was still so acute and bitter it was pouring out of her in waves, radiating off her skin, running her into exhaustion. In hurting him she hurt herself more.

It was too much for Jasper to deal with. He turned to leave but she laid a hand on his arm, on the defenceless spot just above the crook of his elbow.

“Jasper.”

He looked from her hand to his brother on his bench, the king by then talking to the newly-arrived Duke of Exeter. Margaret followed his gaze and dropped her hand. She drew a long breath before she started again in a contrite voice, the only apology she knew how to articulate or that he could ever hope to hear from her.

“Je m’inquiète pour toi. T’as perdu ton père il y a peu de temps.” 

Something tender and raw ripped inside of him at the mention of his father. His guts clenched as if she had just hit him in the stomach. Owen Tudor might have been the king’s stepfather but Jasper knew better than expect anyone to mourn for him — his father, the Welsh squire once persecuted by the king’s council for no fault of his own other than marrying England’s dowager queen. But perhaps what touched Jasper more than anything else was the way Margaret spoke French to him, her voice lowering to a whisper like the reminder of something exquisitely warm and sweet — the same voice his mother had when he thought of those golden, long-past days of his childhood. Hers and his mother tongue, the realisation dawned on him, if only in a different level of meaning.

Coming from Margaret, those words sounded like something too intimate and precious, something meant to be hidden, a side of her she didn’t let anyone else see — anyone, perhaps, but Henry. It had been an unspeakable shock to witness the way she had broken down in front of him, body spent and driven over the edge after fleeing for miles with her son. At the time the Yorkists had just captured Henry and she had never sounded more frightened, her warm cheek so wet against his shoulder he could almost taste the salt running on the side of it. _Qu’ils crèvent! Au nom du père et du fils, qu’ils crèvent tous!_ To hold in his arms the body of a weeping queen — not any queen, but Margaret, beautiful in her righteous rage.

“I must go.” The recollection was so sharp he had to walk away from his own mind. Keeping his body moving, always on the run, that was something Jasper knew how to do. “I should get Harry and change before dinner starts.”

She gave him a nod before he turned, eyes burning black and carving their way into his soul. “I know you will get them this time, Jasper.” He hesitated, taken aback and lost for a second. “You know whom I mean. Herbert, Devereaux, Vaughan—this time all of them will pay what is due to you.”

Five years prior, Margaret had been the one to press the council into calling for the arrest of his brother’s killers, futile as the action had been at the time. That she could still read Jasper’s darkest desire unbalanced him, just slightly, a dizzy sensation at the core like the pit of a fruit blackened and rotten. Jasper tipped his chin down, unable to hold her searing gaze for longer.

“I only want justice.” 

It wasn’t entirely true. What Jasper truly wanted was far uglier, it had a far fouler name.

“Yes," Her smile had a touch of danger to it, shiny like the white blade of a knife. "I have faith in you.” 

Jasper bowed his farewell to her, went over to his brother to excuse himself before his king. When he finally approached his nephew Harry again, he went down on one knee. _Hey there, little lad_. He took the boy in his arms and moved him until he was perched on his right shoulder. _Come now, we must go_. Before rising to his feet, he made sure they were placed firmly against the soft ground. _It’s only you and me now._ The boy laughed above his shoulder, blissfully unaware of Jasper's true meaning. What did loss feel like to a child who had never met his father? _Only you and me and David._

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> *
> 
> Dialogue Translation:
> 
> (*) _"Enough, Margot. Enough, I beg you."_
> 
> (*) _"I'm worried about you. You lost your father only a short time ago."_
> 
> (*) _"May they die! In the name of the father and the son, may they all die!"_
> 
> Some Historical Notes:
> 
> (*) The Battle of Towton was the bloodiest battle of the Wars of the Roses. It happened on a Palm Sunday, 29 March 1461, the start of Holy Week and one of the most revered days in the Christian calendar. It was a decisive victory for the Yorkist party, leaving the leadership of the Duke of York's son, Edward Earl of March, uncontested. The Lancastrians had scoured an ideal location on a hill with the river Cock Beck flowing behind them, Somerset's army facing south. The fight started with the Lancastrian archers loosing their arrows into the sky but, thanks to the swirling winds mixed with snow, this strategy turned up to be catastrophic: their arrows fell short of their range and were picked up by Yorkist archers who promptly shot them back, forcing the Lancastrian army to lose its strategic position uphill. A series of catastrophic events that led to infamous bloodshed ensued, but in this AU, let's say that it didn't snow in that one Palm Sunday and that one considerable factor changed everything.
> 
> (*) Henry VI had been under Warwick's custody during the 2nd Battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461. Warwick fled the scene and, in his haste, left King Henry VI behind. According to a Milanese ambassador's report written on the 15th of March, the king was found singing and laughing under a tree around a mile from the battlefield, though the ambassador did say that _"these are rumours in which I do not repose much confidence"_. It's important to notice that he was writing after Edward IV had been declared king outside St Paul's Cathedral in London.
> 
> (*) When the Duke of York was killed his son Edward Earl of March had been manning his family estates in the Welsh Marches in order to prevent Jasper Earl of Pembroke from uniting his troops with those of the main Lancastrian army in England. Jasper, joined by his father Owen, the Earl of Wiltshire and his mercenaries, met the Earl of March in battle at Mortimer's Cross on 2 February 1461, a catastrophic defeat for the Lancastrians that resulted in the execution of Owen Tudor at Hereford's marketplace some days later. The Earl of March had been aided by William Herbert and Roger Vaughan's Welsh troops, further worsening Jasper's feud with those men. Had Jasper's army been able to cross undefeated and joined Somerset's troops in Yorkshire, the Lancastrians might have been unbeatable. Another AU for another time.
> 
> (*) Queen Margaret had been in Scotland when she heard of York's death at Wakefield. The queen and her son had fled from Coventry to Harlech Castle after Warwick's victory at Northampton on 10 July 1460, a Yorkist victory that resulted in the capture of King Henry VI. The queen sought asylum with Jasper in Wales before she sailed on to Scotland. There she was supported by Mary de Guelders, the dowager queen of James II. In his turn, after the capture of the king, Jasper was commanded by the Duke of York to surrender all castles in Wales and the borders, but it appears as if he did not do so, as a task of men including William Herbert and Roger Vaughan was ordered to take all illegally garrisoned castles in the area.
> 
> (*) Edmund Tudor's death on 1 November 1456 must have impacted greatly on his brother Jasper. Up to that moment he had attended to the king and queen at court, and it is speculated that he had never been to his estates in Pembrokeshire before the event. Regardless, less than two years after Edmund's death he turned into King Henry VI's main deputy in South Wales. Not only did he have to deal with the situation of political unrest in the area, but this newly-arrived Jasper soon had to take in his 13-year-old brother's pregnant widow and provide for the birth of his nephew Henry. Jasper maintained the custody of his nephew when the boy's mother, Margaret Beaufort, was married to the Duke of Buckingham's second son less than a year after his birth. Sometime before the battle of Mortimer's Cross in 1461 the young Henry Tudor was joined by his half-uncle David Owen, Owen Tudor's illegitimate son born in 1459. I chose to write as though Jasper would have kept David in Pembroke Castle in memory of his lost father and his deceased brother Edmund.
> 
> OOF Are you still there? Thank you so much for reading this story and sticking with me! Feel free to leave a comment and stay safe! 🌹x


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